Wine books for Christmas gifts

Published Dec. 3, 2008 at 2:33 a.m.
by Martin FieldPerfumes: The Guide - * * * * * acid spicy $45Wine guides there are in plenty but apparently this is the first critical guide for perfume. Perfumes: The Guide lists some 1500 fragrances and rates them with a five star system. (See (pdf) examples here.)I used to work in the perfume biz and early on realised that perfume shares many elements with wine and its evaluation. Wine lovers will recognise many of the terms used in this book’s fragrance descriptions. You’ll find volatility, fruits and spices, citrus, lactones and aldehydes, acetones and vanillins and all.You can almost smell the scents of expensive fashion houses wafting off the pages. Well in my copy you can. I went to a perfume store and asked for a few perfumed cards, which I took home and sniffed as I read the relevant descriptions and then used them as bookmarks. If ever a book needed a scratch and sniff capsule on every page this is it.Co-authors Turin (AKA the Emperor of Scent) and Sanchez write beautifully. Their expert critiques are at times incisive, hilarious, lavish and scathing. Brilliant!Tania Sanchez and Luca Turin. Hardback. Published by Profile Books. Distributed in Australia by Allen and Unwin


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